


You and I

by Transistance



Series: Incompatible [8]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Asexuality, Established Relationship, F/M, No Dialogue, POV Second Person, Past Relationship(s), Present Tense, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5058247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William and Grell reflect on each other, their relationship and themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You and I

**Author's Note:**

> Did you mean "No, no, god no please don't make me read a fic in second-person"?
> 
> This was written probably just after January (it was a time of second-person writing, and I am sorry) and is thus old and not as good as most of my stuff but HEY!. Hey. Only ten months stale, could be worse.
> 
> To clarify: 'You' is not you the reader, but first William and then Grell.

Sutcliff is unfathomable. You have figured that out, now – you have given up on trying to understand her.

You still call her Sutcliff, in your head. Your brain has not caught up with the reality in which you share a house with her, more often than not a bed with her. She is a true enigma, a murderer cloaked in a romantic masked by an actress, and she is vibrant and exuberant and unpredictable. She is everything you aren't.

You walked into your kitchen the other day to find her sitting laxly at the table, staring at a half-cut pile of peppers and a crimson gash across her hand. She stared up at you, startled, her eyes wide and tearful as she whispered “ _Red_ ,” before standing up to grab you and bawl her eyes out on your shoulder. 

You never knew the lady known as Red, you only knew that Sutcliff had committed murders by her side for two bloody years before murdering the woman herself. You never know if she felt guilt or grief or the mere presence of a missed opportunity at her loss, and you have never asked. She doesn't talk about those years much, and you don't hassle her. Sometimes she remembers the Madam with scorn, and makes dismissive comments about human nature and morality, and other times the mere sight of the colour is enough to set her off.

On these occasions you hold her close to you, try to keep her safe from her own thoughts through physical presence alone. This appears to help her, as far as you can tell. Sometimes she stops crying almost immediately, and darts away to reapply her running makeup, apologizing. Sometimes she just stays still, taking shaky breaths, clutching you as though she doesn't fully believe that you are real.

Why exactly she stays with you is another mystery.

In all honesty, you thought that she would leave you immediately after that night in her apartment. You didn't know you were asexual. You still aren't entirely sure what that entails, but you feel that it makes you very much useless to her. 

But she didn't; there were three days of apparent radio silence between you at work, in which she stayed uncharacteristically quiet and distant – which, in hindsight, you assume was because she was deliberating over the issue, although she'd never admit to that – but shortly after you entered your office one morning to find a short note scrawled in bright red ink sitting on your desk, which simply read ' _It would be terribly rude for a lady to ask her man on a date_ '. You found yourself suddenly and shockingly relieved, although you couldn't give an exact reason as to why.

Grell Sutcliff is the most sexually oriented individual you have ever met, and you cannot contribute anything toward that. She has never brought it up, never once pushed her luck physically or verbally, not since the first time. And yet she seems content. She still flirts with that demon, with your co-workers, with anyone in a suit, really; and yet she is with you. The relationship is not platonic. But it is not sexual either, and sometimes you feel guilty for robbing her of that.

You do kiss her. You can do that; quite well, if her noises and movements are anything to go by. You enjoy kissing her, which is strange, because there is no logical reason that spending time with your tongue in someone else's throat should be pleasant. But you enjoy the closeness of her form against yours, and you enjoy the intensity in her gaze and touch, and the way her pulse accelerates when you move close to her. You don't know why.

She bit you once. Punctured your lip on her incredibly predatory teeth, driven either by over excitement or the desire to provoke a response. You were surprised into letting out a short noise of disapproval, and her mouth and voice became apologetic for a moment. 

Most of your colleagues don't seem to have noticed anything (but then again, that's nothing new) with the exception of Knox, who caught your eye in the corridor the day after that particular incident and gave your mouth a pointed look of mock surprise, raised his eyebrows and smirked as though he had caught you committing the most scandalous of sins. 

You don't know if Sutcliff has told him about your relationship. You don't know if she has told anyone.

Thoughts like these make you wonder if she's ever really had someone to rely on before.

Oh, she gets along with people just fine. Talks at them and panders for their attentions with a single-track flood of affection that is rarely, if ever, returned. 

She has slept with people, you know that. And she was with Madam Red, in some sense of the word – but only for two short years, before that woman's death at the reaper's own hand. You have no idea what their relationship was like until that point. You know she favours men, you know she finds your body attractive, you know she has possibly the worst subordination complex you have ever seen.

You know you find her more fascinating than attractive and you feel guilty for that, too.

Of course, there are much larger offences that you've committed and should feel guilty about. The amount of physical violence and verbal harm you have piled upon her with over the years – for not doing her job, for breaking rules, for being _Grell_ – is immeasurable. She does mention this, in quips and jabs and jibes when the opportunity to do so arises, and you do your best to apologize, but she just smirks at you and lets it pass. 

You try to make up for these past offences by being here for her now; you try to make things work. You do try. Even though Upper Management frowns upon close relationships between individuals in charge and their subordinates; even though you are two polar opposites with a solid sordid history of unhealthy work ethics and one-sided abuse; even though she deserves better than you and you deserve better than her. You are jigsaw pieces that fit together by fluke, despite having come from different sets made to create different pictures.

It is your fault as much as it is hers. You still sometimes glare and utter words that should be unspeakable without thinking; still sometimes stumble and call Sutcliff ' _him_ '. She pretends not to notice.

Sometimes you do find yourself thinking strangely of her for her gender. It makes you question constants in life that should not be questioned. You wonder if she was always aware of being a woman, or if it crept up on her over time. You remember when you first met her – she was quite clearly male. Openly and extremely homosexual, but absolutely male. You don't understand, yourself. You have never questioned your gender because you are male. It isn't something that is up for debate, or can really be harked at. You suppose that's how Sutcliff feels, except inverted. She is a woman – no doubt can be shed on that, not these days – yet... Her body isn't. It is another thing that she doesn't talk about, other than to affirm that she is definitely and defiantly not a man.

You don't know if her femininity has anything to do with her sexuality, or her jarring mood swings, or her unparalleled bloodlust. You don't know if her strange passions run alongside her desire to be a mother, or if she loves the colour red for its connotations or blood for its hue.

You don't know much about her that isn't surface value, really. You know that she is overly dramatic, incredibly focused on whatever unwise goal she has her heart set upon, and incredibly, ridiculously, flamingly _alive_.

You do often wonder if it was her natural vitality – such a vivid contrast against your own cold and colourless being – that repelled you from her so much in the first place.

///

William is cold.

You've known that for years, of course; it's just another of life's little constants. But you never expected it to be entirely true – you thought it was a cover, a ruse (whether conscious or unconscious doesn't matter); a way of hiding himself under layers and layers of mirror and ice.

You were very wrong. Will is a mountain, sharp and foreboding, the sort one would find in a fairytale. But instead of being full of twisting secret passageways, treasure troves or monsters, there is only rock. Skin after skin of thick, unfeeling skin of granite and chalk and slate and maybe pumice. The point that you're trying to make is that he isn't hiding anything in his demeanour, or wearing a social mask the way most people do – he just _is_ , and what he is is _grey_.

You, for instance, are a great actress – but you also wear your heart on your sleeve, and don't hesitate to let the people around you know how you are feeling. Your emotions are turbulent and exuberant, and they characterize your whole being. Will is the same in the respect that he wears his heart on his sleeve – it's just that his heart is as colourless as his suit.

You are almost certain he hasn't always been like this. When you first met him, he wasn't cold, exactly – he was polite to you and straightforward to a fault, but he seemed to genuinely want to do the best he could. You would almost go as far as to say he liked you well enough – then he beat the crap out of you in possibly the most enjoyable moment of your short life up to that point, reaped the blond kid's soul and proceeded on to climb the corporate ladder at an unprecedented pace. After that he assumed an air of superiority; whether consciously or not, he decided he was better than you. You mean, he was right – he is better than you in several ways – but somewhere along the line he lost that last spark of life within him.

You love him. You aren't even fully sure why, at this point – he's a pretty face, but who isn't? (Well, a lot of people aren't, but what sort of lady would you be if you judged a man on the sole attraction of his features? _You_ would _never_ do that). He's your superior, he used to hold you in lower regard even than demons and his sexuality fails to conform with your own in the most spectacular way possible.

Will is asexual. You're not sure that you’ve fully accepted this yet, even though it should have been the most obvious thing about him. You certainly don't understand it. Will, perfect Will, who can make your body react like a flicked switch with nothing more than a smouldering glance, oh... _Why_ could he not be like everyone else?

Of course, you know he's not unique. You'd heard the term before (even though he himself hadn't – that was almost a tragedy in itself) but he was the first you've actually met. You should've guessed, of course, but again, you weren't aware that he didn't wear a mask. You assumed he was straight, then you assumed he was gay, then you almost slept with him and learned the rather mundane truth.

Sometimes your brain throws up suggestions that it shouldn't go near. _How can he know if he's never experienced it_ , your mind whispers. _You could make him enjoy it, I'm sure_.

You hate your mind. These thoughts have never been a problem before and now that you've run into a man who you honestly CANNOT be allowed to be thought of that way, they can't handle it. Your body certainly doesn't understand, and you remind it callously that it's not even yours.

You don't understand why he stays with you. He seems content to let you curl up against his side, to stroke your hair and hold you against him. You've no idea whether he does this for your sake or his own. But it is nice – really, really nice – to just be held, to know that he is there, solid against your own instability and unpredictable fluctuations of emotion and action. You can give him nothing but noise and irritation and another reason to work long hours. And snogging. He can kiss like nobody's business, although where he learned to do that the gods only know. Hopefully he enjoys it as much as you do; certainly he seems a lot more lively when his face is pressed against yours than he does at any other time. It does make you wonder... But you know more than most that appearances can be deceptive.

Still, you wish he would tell you these things explicitly, instead of making you guess at the logic behind his every action. He's probably not even aware that he's doing it.

This contrast between you highlights exactly why you hate it so much when you lose control of your own emotions around him. Sometimes – it's rare, very rare, but it does happen - you just burst into tears, over the smallest of things; things that you never even noticed before. And he's there, he's always there, and you hate it because you know it makes you look weak, pathetic, overcome by the things in your head. You want to scream at him that you're not always like this, and that there's nothing wrong, and that he doesn't need to protect you.

But his body is strong and reassuring and you let your makeup stream into his clothes and he doesn't say a word. You are sad and awful and so, so glad that he is there for you, for whatever reason he chooses to be.

You can't remember exactly when it was that he suggested you move in with him. You assume he grew tired of visiting your cramped rented flat, and decided that things would be more manageable if the two of you were together. That's how he works, you see – makes decisions based on whatever makes the most sense. 

His house, when you first saw it, took your breath away. Although not huge, it was _much_ more spacious than your hovel and had a small garden, and _so many_ rooms. But its atmosphere was different to that of your apartment; where yours was cluttered and strewn throughout with evidence of life, Will's entire house seemed sterile. Not an object out of place, but not exactly clean, either. The dust carpeting his older books – _why does he own so many books if he doesn't read them?_ \- made you melancholy, so you set about cleaning it, as any faithful wife to a house without servants would do. Not that you're married to him, not yet. But you will be, some day.

...It wasn't really your femininity that made you clean up the dust.

The dust showed, clearly and openly, Will's lack of motion; his paralysing apathy. He spoke to you about it once, when half asleep and wholly inebriated – told you how he didn't think he could care about things. Any things.

This scared you. 

People need to care. People need to care, about the big things in existence, about the small things. People need to care about the people around them, and about how they are seen, and themselves, and everything they do. If one can't muster up even a thread of emotion for something, what is the point of existing at all??

You don't want Will to not exist. You don't want Will to feel like he has no reason to exist, even though he's never indicated that to be the case. You suppose his paperwork keeps him going. But that's not enough to live on! 

It does make you wonder – makes you think about things that you'd prefer to ignore. Perhaps you see everything through a slightly tinted lens – not even crimson tinted, necessarily, just... more colourful than most. It is not as if Will is the only monochrome man floating around this establishment – he is just the most perfected in the art of apathy. Perhaps reapers are created to be as unfeeling as possible – a mold held to aid unbiased and efficient work. Perhaps you, with your colour and your fire and your love, are nothing more than a deviant.

You don't want to be a deviant, even though you know you are considered one already by... well, most people. You don't want William to be a deviant, even if he is whatever he is. You don't want everyone to be considered normal because, well, what about the ones who aren't? You don't know what you want, so you don't think about it. 

Sometimes you sing. Singing recognises the common knowledge that the world is, in fact, all a stage, and also provides a means of escape when unwanted thoughts accost you. Will doesn't seem to mind. You've been told on occasion that you have a beautiful voice – but only by humans. Reapers do not appreciate music in the same way mortals do, for some reason. Don't have the ears for it. You think it makes the house feel less dead, but that might be because it's you who's making the noise.

You wish you could make him happy.


End file.
